Any minute now…
A good ten minutes later, he came back to the porch, sweaty, dusty, and with bloody knuckles.
“Thanks for tearing down the shed. Feeling better?”
She dropped the dishtowel she was holding when he bent down, grabbed her face between dirty hands, and kissed her.
Oh, so he was that kind of frustrated, too.
Heat shot straight through her. It was a ferocious kiss, wild with hunger that had her clutching on to his sweaty shoulders just to stay standing. Then, just as abruptly, he let go and Jena had to put one hand on the doorjamb to make sure she didn’t fall over.
Caleb panted. “I feel a little better now. Can you call your father about the air-conditioner?”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I can do that.”
His eyes looked past her. “You’re cleaning your house?”
“Yes.”
“You done vacuuming?”
“Huh? Yeah, I’m done with the—”
“I’m gonna fall asleep on your couch now. If I get it dirty, I’ll have it cleaned, okay?”
Without asking, he toed off his boots at the door, strode into the living room, and collapsed on the sofa. As Jena turned around, she saw him take a deep breath and his eyes flickered closed. She picked up the dishtowel and quietly closed the door.
“All right, then.”
She stared at the incredibly attractive, half-naked man who was already snoring and decided that ice water was a good idea.
For her.
Jena had finished cleaning the kitchen and was quietly folding laundry in the bedroom when she heard the boys come home from school. She started toward the living room to warn them not to make too much noise and wake up Caleb. Though judging from the rhythmic snoring, she guessed the man might sleep through a herd of elephants. She still couldn’t believe he’d just showed up and fallen asleep on her couch. Just then, the snoring stopped and Jena heard Aaron.
“Hey, Uncle Alex! Why are you sleeping on the couch?”
Jena stopped dead in her tracks. Uncle Alex?
She ran into the living room to see Alex sitting up from the couch wearing Caleb’s jeans. Then the shirt she’d been holding dropped to the floor and her heart went into overdrive when she saw him sit up. Alex? No… Caleb? No. What. The—
The man with Alex’s face spoke in Caleb’s hoarse voice, “Oh, hey Bear.”
Low dropped his backpack, his mouth gaping open. Aaron wrinkled up his little forehead in confusion. Jena looked at the man sitting on her couch, watching them all with bleary eyes.
“What’s going on?” He blinked and rubbed his eyes as the skin on his face rippled. “Sorry, I think I may be getting sick.”
Caleb. No, Alex. The eyes were Caleb, but the mouth was… He was changing before her eyes, his fair skin turning darker along with his hair. The angle of his jaw shifted and Jena gasped.
He spoke again in Caleb’s voice. “Jena?”
“Wh—what are you?” She moved in front of the boys, shoving them both behind her.
Alex—no Caleb—no whatever-he-was spoke again. “Jena? What’s wrong?” His eyes searched the room for the threat until he glanced at the mirror that hung in the entryway. Then the black eyes widened, he bolted up, and his hands went to his face in confusion. “What the hell?”
Jena backed farther away, herding the children behind her, but Aaron popped his head out from the side and said, “See, Mom! I told you he was like us!”
Then Caleb’s face drained white as a sheet, and he fainted dead away.
Chapter Fourteen
What was he sleeping on? Whatever it was, he’d have to—
“Caleb?”
Who was that? It sounded like Jena.
“Caleb?”
If he had gotten lucky and couldn’t remember it—
“It looks like he’s waking up.”
Uh… Bear?
“Low, run and get a washcloth.”
“Can I help, Mom?”
“No, just stay back.”
Caleb’s eyes flickered open. There was a ceiling fan and Jena’s face. She was so beautiful when she smiled. But she wasn’t smiling. Her face was…
Her face.
His face.
“Shit!” He sat bolt upright, hitting his head on the coffee table by the couch. “Fuck!”
Jena slapped his shoulder. “Hey! Watch the language.”
Caleb looked around the room. Aaron was there, grinning at him as he sat on the ground. “You owe me a dollar. That was two bad words, Chief Caleb. And you said a couple before you passed out, too.” The boy ran down the hall just as Low came back in the room with a cool washcloth that Jena pressed to Caleb’s forehead.
His face! He jerked away from her and touched his face, but it felt normal. His stomach, however, felt like it wanted to turn itself inside out.
“It was a dream,” he panted. “Just a crazy dream. Must have been—”
Low interrupted. “If you’re talking about your face getting all wonky and turning into our Uncle Alex, then it wasn’t a dream.”
“Fuck!” The nausea rolled through him.
“Will you stop?” Jena yelled.
He heard the rattle of coins and a half-full Mason jar was waved in front of his face.
“That’s another one!” Aaron crowed.
“Bear, put the jar down.” Low grabbed his arm and pulled his brother away as Caleb stumbled to his feet.
“What the hell?” He patted his face and looked in the mirror. “What happened to me?”
Jena finally spoke again, the wet washcloth dangling from her fingers. “I don’t know, but will you stop with the language around my boys, please?”
He spun and glared at her. “My FACE looked like someone else’s, Jena! I’m not too concerned about my language at the moment!”
“Well, learn some manners in my house, Caleb Gilbert!”
Aaron slowly slid the Mason jar on the coffee table. “I’m just gonna leave that out for now…”
“My face, Jena. What the hell happened to my face?”
“You don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t know!” His eyes popped open. “It’s this crazy-ass town, isn’t it?”
“Don’t blame this on my town!” She was livid.
“Uh… Mom,” Low said. “He probably should blame it on the town. I mean, it turns us into animals, so—”
“Into what?” Caleb stared at the boy. “Into animals?”
Low had a smug look on his face. “Wolves, cats, snakes, birds.”
Aaron piped up. “Uncle Ollie turns into a bear!”
Caleb felt lightheaded. “You’re all crazy.”
“But you turned into another person,” Aaron said. “That was way cool. I told you, Mom.”
“Aaron, be quiet,” Jena snapped. “Caleb, did you drink from any of the springs?”
He just kept looking between the three of them. Jena looked irritated, but mostly concerned. Low wore that little smug smile on his face, like Caleb was an idiot who’d been left out of an inside joke. Aaron… the little boy looked up at him with frank admiration and pure delight.
They seemed like such a nice little family. “Too bad you’re all bat-shit nuts.”
Jena scowled and Aaron said, “I am going to make so much money today.”
“Will you get your mouth under—?”
He strode over to her and slapped a hand over her mouth before he turned to the boys. “Bear, how about I just buy you a car when you turn sixteen? That sounding all right to you?”
Low piped up. “I want one, too.”
“Lose the attitude and I’ll think about it.”
Jena pried his hand from her mouth. “You jerk! Stop manhandling me! Now, did you drink from any of the springs or not?”
“No one turns into animals.” He shook his head and stepped back. The faint nausea had worsened, and his stomach turned. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Caleb?”
“Y
ou’re all crazy, and I’m gonna be sick.”
“Hey!”
He stumbled toward the door, feeling dazed. “Have to get out of here. Crazy people in this house. I had to fall for the crazy girl, didn’t I?”
“We’re not crazy,” Low said. “And we may turn into animals, but that thing you did with your face was way weird.”
Caleb shook his head and put his hand on the doorknob. “I’m not weird. You’re weird. No one turns into animals. No one turns into other people…”
Just then, Caleb caught his reflection in the hall mirror. He sighed in relief and closed his eyes. It was a dream, just a crazy dream. Just like he’d been dreaming about beating the shit out of Alex McCann right before he woke—
“Mom, he’s doing it again.”
“Oh hell.”
His eyes popped open and he looked in the mirror. A faint shimmer, like the heat off the desert road, rippled over his face. His hair lengthened and lightened…
“Oh shit.”
Not a dream.
He bolted for the door, flinging it open just as he emptied his stomach on the porch.
Caleb dumped another bucket of water out before he grabbed the old broom and swept it over the side. “Sorry about the puke.”
Jena shrugged. “Someone puking is probably the most normal part of this day so far. At least I’m not the one cleaning it up.”
He fell silent while he worked. Sweep. Ignore Jena’s stare. Fill the bucket. Ignore the fact his face had changed shape before his eyes. Scrub. Did he have a brain tumor? Wash. Did everyone have brain tumors? Sweep some more.
“Do you really turn into an animal?” he asked quietly.
“Uh…” She watched him cautiously. “Yep. You gonna puke again?”
He blinked and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Tell the truth. Is this some weird joke you pull on new people in town?”
“Nope.”
Somehow, he knew she was telling the truth. That tickle in the back of his mind—the one that had bothered him since that first night at the town meeting—sighed in relief as if to say, “Of course! So that’s what’s seemed off. You moved to a whole town full of people who turn into animals.” There was no explanation for this. It couldn’t be real… except for the fact that he knew it was.
“It’s not a joke, Caleb. I’m sorry.”
“It’s the water in the springs?”
“Just the fresh spring,” she said quietly.
“The fresh spring?” He finally finished and leaned against the porch railing across from her. He could see the boys peeking through the windows, but they stayed away from the door. “That’s… it’s the one in the cave, isn’t it? I drank… I’d been jogging in the canyon. I saw the coyote drinking, so I figured it was safe. I was in such a weird mood…”
It had been more than a mood, he realized. The coyote had led him there. Coyote was the trickster god. He should’ve known. The superstitions of his grandmother reared up and he fought the instinctive cringe. He didn’t believe in that stuff. He didn’t. If he did, then what just happened to him was more horrible than he could imagine.
“It’s the water, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s what caused all this. The water turns you into animals. It turned me into… something else. Everyone in town?”
“Everyone descended directly from the founders. There were seven families at first. Two brothers, the McCanns, both Confederate soldiers. Not rich. Just trying to protect their homes. There was one Indian in their company. A Cherokee who served as a scout.”
“Your ancestor?” He knew she had some native blood.
She nodded and continued. “They went west. Their town in the mountains had burned, and Thomas Crowe had a vision about a raven flying over an oasis in the middle of the desert. Far away from everyone. A safe place. They gathered more people as they traveled. A free black man who ran off some thieves attacking their camp, William Allen. A pickpocket who Thomas saved from drowning in the Mississippi, Rory Quinn.”
He thought about sneaky Old Quinn. “That explains so much.”
Jena smiled. “There was a rancher and his sister in Texas. Gabriel Vasquez and Reina Vasquez de Leon. She was widowed and he was broke, but they had animals and equipment. They wanted a fresh start, too.”
“Seven families.”
Jena nodded again. “They found their way here. Thomas could only take them so far, but the younger McCann brother, Andrew, he seemed able to sense the water. He led them to the springs. There was only one with drinkable water. It was in a cave, but Andrew told them where to dig.”
He was drawn in, the low sound of her voice hypnotic as she told the story of this strange place. A humming filled his blood, the same electricity he remembered from the sings his uncle did when he was a boy. “They found the fresh spring.”
“Yes,” she said. “All of them drank the water. They hollowed out a basin in the rocks and used it like a well. It tasted great.”
“It still does.”
“Yes, it does.” She paused. “They had been living in the bottom of the canyon for months before anyone noticed anything.”
“Who noticed?”
“Thomas. His journals say he’d been having strange dreams. Then, one day, he woke up and… he wasn’t. That’s what he wrote. He had turned into a raven in his sleep just like in his dream. It always happens first in your sleep, like your mind has to be unconscious to turn the key that first time.”
“You?” he asked. “What do you…?”
Could he ask that? Was it too personal? She hesitated a moment.
“A hawk,” she said. “But I can turn into any bird I want to if I concentrate hard enough. All the Crowes turn into different birds.”
“Jeremy warned me you had talons.” He shook his head and swallowed the lump in his throat. “The boys? Are they…?”
She blinked back tears. “Not yet. Their dad never shifted when he was younger. That’s why Lowell died young. But he was a McCann. He should have been a wolf. Most of the McCanns are. The boys could be either when they shift. Bird or wolf.”
Caleb forced his mind to bend around it. “This isn’t real, Jena.”
He saw her blink away tears. “It’s terribly real, but I’m sorry you got pulled into it.”
Caleb shook his head, the rational part of him still trying to wake up.
“What were you dreaming about?”
He looked up, surprised. “What?”
“Earlier. When you… changed.”
He closed his eyes and let out a rueful laugh. “I was dreaming about beating the shit out of Alex McCann because he wouldn’t give me an alibi the night Alma was killed. It was a pretty satisfying dream until I woke up.”
“You turned into him. You were dreaming about him and you turned into him.”
“I guess so.”
“By the way, Alex couldn’t give you an alibi, but he was with Jeremy and the rest of his pack the night Alma was killed. It was a full moon that night.”
“And you and Alma… you weren’t going to the mud pool, I guess.”
She shook her head.
“Flying?” She’d said all her family turned into birds.
Jena nodded.
“That’s why you weren’t wearing clothes. You’d flown out there.”
She whispered, “We didn’t get to fly much together. She usually watched the boys for me.”
All the mismatched puzzle pieces seemed to fall into place. And that, more than anything else, confirmed that Caleb’s reality was no longer what it had been. What was it that Sherlock Holmes said? Rule out every other option and whatever crazy shit was left over had to be right. Or something like that.
“The problem is, Caleb, you’re not like us.” Jena said. “No one is going to know what to do with you. Outsiders never drink from the spring. They usually never find it. But even people that marry in don’t seem to be affected when they drink. Trust me, more than a few have tried. And no one I’ve ever heard of has turned into a people-
shifter.”
“Is that a technical term?”
She ignored him and rose. “I’m going to call my dad and Devin.”
“Devin Moon, the sheriff’s deputy? He knows?”
“All the tribes along the river know,” she muttered as she walked in the house. The boys were sitting on the couch, watching television like it was any other afternoon. Caleb supposed that for them, the idea of people shifting into other people wasn’t really all that big a stretch. “And Devin’s dad is an elder.”
“And you trust him? Trust them?”
“The Tribes don’t want outside attention any more than we do, except at the casino. And Devin may play the good ol’ boy, but he’s way smarter than he looks.”
They walked inside, and while Jena went to the kitchen to call, Caleb sat on the couch next to Aaron, who immediately scooted over to his side. Low glanced at him, but the normal glare was gone and the boy was examining him with new eyes. Apparently, being a cop who liked his mom was suspect, but a weird-ass supernatural creature who could transform his face accorded Caleb some respect.
Teenagers.
Devin watched him with a purposefully blank stare while Jena explained to him and her dad what had happened. Tom perched next to the boys on the couch, Jena was pacing, and Caleb and Devin both leaned against opposite walls in the crowded living room. Caleb was watching Jena as she flitted around the room. He was intensely curious what she looked like in hawk form. Was she just a normal hawk? Bigger? Did she hunt? Could she lay an egg if she wanted to? Then he blinked. Somehow, he knew asking that one was a bad idea.
“So,” Devin interrupted. “What you’re saying is he’s like you guys?”
“Um, no! We turn into animals. He’s actually turning into other people, Dev.”
Caleb’s scowled. “Can I ask why you’re acting like what I’m doing is so much weirder than you getting feathers every few weeks?”
“Animal shifting is completely natural.”